By Megan Gleason / Journal Staff Writer
Seventeen-year-old Ada Ovitt has lived in New Mexico her whole life and feels a connection to the beautiful mountains and desert. She doesn’t want to see climate change take that away.
She’s trying to put together a Youth Climate Leadership Council to do more to address the warming globe. The council’s first meeting is Saturday and all high school students are welcome.
She’s not the only student trying to help find solutions to climate change. College students who have lived through natural disasters brought on by a warming atmosphere are studying new programs and majors dedicated to climate change, according to the Associated Press.
More and more schools are offering these sorts of climate-based pathways. Public colleges in New Mexico, like the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University, often have specific climate change courses but not entire majors dedicated solely to climate change.
Ovitt, who will be a junior in the upcoming school year at Albuquerque Academy, said she was really scared of and stressed by climate change when she was younger but didn’t know what she could do about it.
“It’s really important for young people to have a place where they can both learn about it and also work together and have their own voices heard,” she said.